MANILA — While the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) welcomes the European Union’s (EU) 10-day mission to the Philippines, it also warns the EU against simply acceding to the Arroyo government’s request for so-called technical assistance to put a stop to extrajudicial killings in the country.
Torture victims in the Philippines have suffered from the physical
and mental pain inflicted on them by those who have mercilessly
tortured them and have suffered a second time from the lack of a law
criminalising torture. For years, torture victims in the country have
been waiting for redress and a legal tool they can use to prosecute
their torturers. Even filing complaints supported with substantial
proof and medical evidence to support torture claims are later found
to be a meaningless exercise by victims and their legal counsel.
Because torture is not a criminal offence under the
Philippines’ penal code, torture victims can file a complaint,
but usually it makes little or no progress in the court system, if it
even reaches the courts. It can even take prosecutors years—for
instance, 11 years in one case—without resolving a complaint.
Often those accused are able to retire or commit similar offences
again and again without being held accountable for their violent
actions.
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MANILA– Senate Minority Leader Aquilino ?Nene? Q. Pimentel,
Jr. (PDP-Laban) today called on the Commission on
Elections to prevent another electoral catastrophe and
to seize the opportunity to redeem its impaired
reputation by deciding once and for all to exclude the
senatorial votes from Mindanao for being tainted with
fraud and being devoid of any semblance of truth and
credibility.
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MANILA — Lawyer Aquilino Pimentel III today cited six more municipalities in Mindanao where ?dagdag-bawas? (vote-padding and shaving) operations were carried out by fraud syndicates to give Team Unity bet Juan Miguel Zubiri a large margin over him.
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MANILA — The umbrella group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan today called for a congressional inquiry into the role of military commanders assigned in the Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) and Southern Luzon Command (Solcom) of the Armed Forces of the Philippines after a general again linked the AFP to the spate of extrajudicial killings in the country.
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